The reality is that the traumatic events we have each experienced did happen. And they did change us. Molecularly, yes. And more importantly, fundamentally those events in so many ways inform who we have been, who we are currently, and will continue to inform the people we continue to evolve into.

The events happened. There is no changing that. The conscious memories we do have, we will not forget. They are imprinted now in our explicit memory.

And.

The body remembers too. That remembering shows up as anxiety and or depression. It shows up as a low tolerance for sudden and loud sounds. It shows up, for me, in my own yelly-ness.

However, the implicit memory of the body is something that can actually be reset. While the mind will remember forever the things that it does (barring any dementia in the future), the body can release the memories of trauma that lives within it.

This is true for all of us.

This resetting is not done quickly. It usually involves a lot of discomfort and moving out of our own norms and ways of doing and being. Often times things may feel like they are getting worse before they get better. And sometimes we reach a point of wishing we’d never started down this journey of processing the trauma that lives in our bodies and being.

Life can be challenging, even hard. Often there are discussions out in the greater world, as well as in our private lives, that are uncomfortable and even triggering. Add to this the fact that sometimes our anxiety ramps itself up without any obvious cause and well, our daily lives can be challenging at best.

There are times where we forget all we know about how to self-regulate and self-soothe. There are times that we need someone else to help us reset. There are times of lots of tears and actually feeling some pretty intense feelings.

Which is to say, that while we may have processed a lot of the trauma that lives within us, there is (always?) still more work to do. And also, life happens to all of us and sometimes we just have bad days or weeks or months.

And.

While it is true there are times that we can’t access all the things we know about self-soothing and self-regulating, with practice there will be more times that we are able to access at least some of what we know and utilize the tools we have worked so hard to ingrain in our mind and body.

Here’s an important thing to note however: there is a difference between calming our nervous systems and not feeling our feelings.

Stuffing our feelings, not allowing them to be expressed in some way, is not the same as calming, soothing, or resetting our systems.

While it is true that we may be able to calm our anxiety and bring ourselves back from our amygdala, it is also true that we are also able to cry and feel sadness.

We can both feel sad and have our nervous system regulated at the same time, is what I’m trying to say.

Sometimes I think we are sold a bill of goods on what it means to process our trauma, or to heal our brain stems, or to reset our nervous systems. Doing these things does not mean we will not feel intense sadness. It does not mean we will only ever be happy shiny people.

Having a healthy nervous system does not stop us from feeling grief. Or fear.

What it does is allow us to feel those emotions, and the sensations that go with those emotions, and still remain present in our bodies and in the present moment.

In fact, I would argue, that having a healthy nervous system, one that is not in a constant activated state of fight/flight/freeze, may mean we actually feel those emotions more intensely. Because we stay with them in the now. Because we literally are able to feel them in our bodies. Because we are no longer stuffing them down or disassociating from what is happening within us.

I believe this is an important thing to note:

At times, having a healthy nervous system may actually mean we feel worse.

BUT.

That feeling worse, is momentary. It isn’t a constant state. It will pass.

AND.

That sense of feeling “worse” is actually part of the resetting. It is part of learning to actually feel the emotions and sensations that we have been ignoring for so long. It is part of learning that we can feel our feelings and not be flooded or overwhelmed by them, even if they feel overwhelming in the moment.

When we first start to do the work of trauma processing and coming home to our bodies, everything is new. Even the slightest sensations or emotions can feel intense. Not overwhelming, but intense. It is the newness of it all that can feel a bit “too much” even though in actuality our systems are not being activated or flooded in a trauma sense.

We can feel intense emotions and sensations and not be overwhelmed back into an activated state.

Feeling our emotions and the sensations of our body is not the same as being triggered into a trauma state.

Over the last few years there have been more and more times where I have felt all those emotions and sensations. It is not fun. I have cried a lot of tears. AND I was not in a fight/flight/freeze state. It is true at some points I was not verbal, and often being in our emotions is a non-verbal state and so we find other ways to express ourselves (crying, art, cleaning, movement, etc). It is true that when our nervous systems are activated that we can become more flooded when we feel our emotions and sensations.

It is true that being non-verbal is also part of having activated nervous systems and being in a fight/flight/freeze state. It is true that a sense of overwhelm is part of having the trauma living within us triggered and activated.

And.

It is also true that with time and processing, we learn the difference between feeling our feelings and becoming or being flooded or overwhelmed or triggered.

We learn to tolerate uncomfortable sensations and emotions without going into a fight/flight/freeze state. We learn that feeling our emotions and the sensations of our body isn’t dangerous or life threatening.We learn to hold ourselves and allow ourselves to be held.

It takes work and time. In many ways it has taken me years and in others mere months to be where I am now. To be able to feel intense sadness without becoming lost in a forever downward spiral. To be able to feel both the intensely uncomfortable and intensely pleasurable sensations of my body without going into a trauma triggered state.

I now have a sense of freedom and safeness within myself that I had not had for most of my life. And it is amazing, even when feeling some of these emotions and sensations isn’t always pleasant.

This sense of freedom is something I want for everyone. The journey to this place is not easy; it is filled with challenges and discomfort. It is also filled with rewards and peace. And I believe it is all worth it.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly newsletter in January 2018 and has been edited for publication here. To receive my most current essays you can subscribe to my newsletter here.

Playing the victim role: Manipulator portrays him- or herself as a victim of circumstance or of someone else’s behavior in order to gain pity, sympathy or evoke compassion and thereby get something from another. Caring and conscientious people cannot stand to see anyone suffering and the manipulator often finds it easy to play on sympathy to get cooperation.…so often victims end up unnecessarily prolonging their abuse because they buy into the notion that their abuser must be coming from a wounded place and that only patient love and tolerance (and lots of misguided therapy) will help them heal. ~George K. Simon Jr., In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People

Gaslighting. This is something most of us have experienced in our lives, whether we are conscious of it or not. Because of what gaslighting is, it is highly likely it’s happening and you don’t realize it.

According to Wikipedia:

Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or members of a group, hoping to make targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target’s belief.

Instances may range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim. The term owes its origin to a 1938 play Gas Light and its 1944 film adaptation. The term has been used in clinical and research literature, as well as in political commentary.

Something to note about gaslighting is the manipulator doesn’t have to be intentionally doing it. Anytime anyone questions your own experience or tells you what you remember isn’t true – that’s gaslighting.

Here’s a thing though – gaslighting doesn’t just happen in our personal relationships. Gaslighting happens All The Time culturally. It is a part of our patriarchal culture and wounding.

Gaslighting is part of our patriarchal wounding and cultural relational trauma. It is traumatic and re-traumatizing for those of us who live in a patriarchal culture (all of us). This gaslighting shows up in the form of telling us our Noes do not matter. Our consent is irrelevant. Our boundaries don’t need to be respected or even acknowledged.

This gas lighting, I find, is particularly insidious. And that is of course intentional and by design. Gas lighting has us believing that either our experience isn’t real or that our experience is our own fault and not the fault of the other person or our culture.

This shows up on a broader scale as victim blaming, slut shaming, or actually being told that what we saw or heard or experienced wasn’t real or that we “misunderstood.”

This also shows up in the statistics of violence of against women. How every day, on average, three women are murdered by current or former intimate partners. How one in six women experience rape or attempted rape (and these are only the numbers reported, we know from lived experience that this number is much closer to six in six women). How 1 in 3 women have been victims of some form of physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime (again these are only the reported numbers).

This shows up when a man “mansplains” to us our own lived experience or what we meant to say or write.

This shows up when we say something, it is ignored, and then a (typically white) man states exactly the same thing and gets praise.

This shows up in Freudian psychology that blames the mother for all our problems and also tells us that as women we have sexual fantasies about our fathers (um, no. No I do not.).

This shows up in all the parenting books that tell us what to do and how to do it instead of trusting ourselves.

This shows up in all those stories of how we are too much: too emotional, too loud, too reactionary.

This shows up in all those stories of how we aren’t enough, how we can’t do anything right, how we are broken and need to be fixed, how we have to keep trying harder and harder and striving more and more to become “perfect.”

This shows up in a thousand ways every single day of our lives.

We are gaslit by the media. By our culture. By our families and friends.

Some of it I believe is intentional. And also, some of it, I believe, is not.

Regardless, it’s still gaslighting.

All this gaslighting, which is actually part of our lived reality, creates fear and terror and confusion. Fear, terror and confusion keep us small and quiet and obedient and compliant. It keeps us chasing our own tails. It keeps us pointing fingers at other women as The Problem. It keeps us isolated. It keeps us complicit.

When we are sitting in isolation, distrusting and judging other women, we are allowing the patriarchal culture to keep us leashed.Because our culture and the systems it propagates knows that when we are singular and isolated we can’t do a whole lot of harm.

Because it knows that if we come together in community and solidarity, it is fucked and will be burned down to the ground as we breathe fire in unison.

Because it knows the way to keep us leashed is to keep us distracted with the stories of how other women are bad and out to get us and how we ourselves are also not enough and too much and don’t deserve to exist.

One of the effects of gaslighting and other forms of patriarchal wounding that I find to be most harmful is the isolation and distrust of other women.

The reality that we are not in community.

The reality that mothers are to blame for everything that is wrong with their children, be they infants, adults, or anywhere in between.

The reality that we shame the hell out of other women for speaking up or demanding their boundaries be respected.

The reality that we completely disregard another woman’s No.

The reality that we, particularly white women, will claw and trample all over each other to get the crumbs of success (white) men deign to offer us.

This leashing runs deep. It goes back thousands of years. It is connected to the trauma inflicted on us as women, for generations. It lives in our blood and bones, muscle and being.

It is real. We are not making it up.

Epigenetics shows us how trauma is passed down through our DNA from our ancestors. And when each generations experiences trauma of one form or another or many forms, that gets added to what is passed down. It becomes cumulative and maybe even exponential.

We all carry this unprocessed trauma of our ancestors. Add to it the trauma of our lived experience be that physical or sexual violence (or both) or the trauma of living in a culture that considers us Less Than.

It’s no wonder we in-fight with other women. It’s no wonder we question our sanity. It’s no wonder we often stay quiet and isolated and small. It is no wonder the leash stays on and the current president is in power and are left feeling lost and confused.

This is all by design. This is all intentional. This is how oppressors keep the oppressed from fighting back against them.

One of ways we can take off the patriarchal leash, one of the ways we can start to shift, one of the ways we can begin to tear all this shit down, is by noticing.

Noticing the ways we allow others to tell us what our lived experience is.

As we notice and acknowledge we can also begin to unravel all the wounding and trauma and stories that lives with us. We can become curious about our whys and hows and whos. We can begin to say No and I will do better and I will do different next timeand then actually do better and different.

It will be a slow process. It will be messy. We will make mistakes. We will fuck it up.

We will need to learn to sincerely apologize.

We will need to learn to tolerate being wrong.

We will need to learn to tolerate making mistakes and being imperfect.

We will need to learn to listen.

We will need to learn when it is important to speak our truth and share our voice and when it is important to move aside and allow others to be in the center.

We will need to learn to trust other women.

We will need to learn to be trustworthy to other women.

We will need to learn to be build each other up, to support each other.

We will need to learn what it is to be in true community, to understand we all have this leash around our necks, we all have our own unlearning to do.

And that we can do this all together.

In community.

Unearthing and examining and dismantling and dislodging our own wounds and wounding behaviors.

As we come together, as we act in rebellious solidarity in community, we will see how our stories and experiences are similar and yet unique. How we weren’t making it all up. How it wasn’t just in our heads.

As we share our stories and experiences in community we will see how we have all been gas lit by our culture. By the myth of the Perfect Woman. By the myth that women are sinful and evil.

This is an act of resistance. This is an act of rebellion. This is an act of defiance.

And it is how we will burn it all down to ground with our fiery breathe.It is how we will rise from the ashes, together. In community. United. Together.

/../This essay was originally shared as my weekly newsletter in August 2017. It has been edited and revise for publication here.

…as a survivor and a bystander of family violence, desire was hard to trust. … So all of my erotic self was wrapped in ‘how do I associate with pleasure and desire without fear, without losing control, without being harmed?’ I really had to walk out of a space that allowed for me to unravel and unpack those things as separate so I could define my sexuality and my erotic self in relationship to something that did not have to be violent, to understand that desire to be loved and to love your family wasn’t always mired with violent pasts but could begin again with new, healing destinies.

…

…This is about structural violence too and about how I relate to myself through desire when I am deeply undesirable, I am expendable, and I am only here for labor or reproduction? And… then what is my erotic self in that, when you’re devoid of being able to define yourself outside of capitalism and white supremacy? ~Cara Page, in adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism

There once was a time in my life when I considered myself to be relatively asexual. I mean, I liked to dress up and look sexy, but a truth was, I don’t know that I ever actually felt sexy and I definitely know that I didn’t really care one way or the other about the act of sex itself; it was nice and fun and all and also eh.

Looking back at the me of my teens, twenties, and even thirties, I can say that was pretty much my attitude towards any type of pleasure: I could dress the part, even enjoyed dressing the part to an extent, but when it came right down to it I had no interest or strong feelings about it either way. Wearing my clothes wasn’t exactly pleasurable, I didn’t really enjoy food or eating (though I did eat plenty), I generally hated my homes and didn’t take a lot of pleasure being in them. I would zone out on TV, not really paying attention or enjoying what I watching. I didn’t read a lot, and what I did I don’t know that I really paid attention either.

I lived life through the motions. Not really being present, definitely not being in my body. I could “take or leave” pleasure, because frankly, I couldn’t actually feel it. I didn’t cry a lot, but I didn’t laugh a lot either.

I don’t know how young I was the first time I left my body, and it was definitely by the age of four and may have been younger. Between the physical violence of my mother and the sexual abuse from various family members and friends, I learned very early on that being in my body was not safe, and was not a place I wanted to be. To be in my body was to be in pain, in fear, confused.

When we add to this being told for as long as I can remember by my father that he wished I was a boy, which was compounded over the years by our culture stating quite clearly that women and girls were less than, of course I didn’t want to be in my body. Of course I hated my body and being it.

Not being in my body meant that I could avoid pain, or so I thought. But what I didn’t understand then was that while I was doing all I could to not feel the painful sensations and emotions of my body and life experience, I was also missing out on any type of pleasure that came my way.

After the birth of my daughter, almost 12 years ago now, I started on a journey of being the mother, the parent, I always wished I had. This lead to me truly beginning my own trauma work, which eventually led me to somatic and body-centered mindfulness practices. I entered into this work, not to feel pleasure, or even to be in my body, or for any reason for myself. I entered into this work for my daughter, so she could have a different childhood and life than mine.

Here’s the thing though, at the end of the day it doesn’t actually matter why I entered into this work. It doesn’t matter if it was for her or for me, if I had any intentions of actually being in my body or not, or feeling pleasure or not. I entered into the work, and the rest, as they say, is history.

While it is true that I experienced physical abuse as a child, and that definitely impacted my relationship with my body and being in it, I know that the sexual trauma I experienced, both in childhood and young adulthood, also has its impact, and perhaps a greater impact on my relationship with my sexuality and with pleasure (sexual and non) itself.

When we don’t feel safe within our own bodies, when “sex” is used as a weapon against us, especially at a very young age when our brains and neuropaths are beginning to develop, it only follows that we would have a very complex relationship with our sexuality and with pleasure.

Sexual trauma impacts us in many ways. It can cause anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation. It can have us live in a dissociate state, outside of our bodies, outside of the present moment. It can have us feeling unsafe in our bodies, in our surroundings, and in our relationships. Because of all this it can prevent us feeling happiness, joy, and pleasure. Which I now believe to be perhaps the most devastating impact of all.

Learning to come into our bodies is not easy and frankly I don’t even think it’s “fun.” It is hard work, requiring intention, patience, and self compassion.

And, in order for us to learn to experience pleasure, we need to come into our bodies. Pleasure, including happiness, including joy, including truly savoring the food we eat, feeling the softness of our clothes, sheets, blankets, smelling the complexities of flowers. Pleasure including being present in the moment, enjoying our loved ones and the beautiful experiences life has to offer us. And yes, pleasure including our sexuality and the acts of sex itself.

But coming into our bodies is only part of this work. An important and large part, yes, but only a part all the same.

There is a deeper aspect of pleasure that we seem to associate with only sex and our sexuality, and that is the pleasure of relationship: deep, vulnerable, honest, relationship. To have these types of relationships, be they sexual or not, we need to trust, ourselves and others. Trauma, and especially childhood trauma, destroys our ability to trust those we love, those who love us because as children those who were supposed to care for us, to protect us, betrayed us instead.

This betrayal is not an easy thing to undo. This betrayal prevents us from allowing ourselves to deeply love and be deeply loved. It stops us from trusting others with our darkest shadows as well as our brightest lights. It keeps us hiding, putting on the appearance of happiness or connection or joy while we are only going through the motions. It keeps us disconnected, feeling alone, and stuck in patterns and cycles that are ultimate harmful to ourselves.

Learning to come into our bodies, learning to trust the messages it is giving us as well as to trust that we can experience all the sensations and emotions in our bodies without harm coming to us, helps us learn to trust other aspects of ourselves which in turn helps us to learn to trust other people (and to learn to know who to trust and who not to).

Humans are social creatures. We are wired for connection, for belonging, for love. To experience the pleasure of being in an honest, vulnerable relationship may be one of the greatest experiences our lives as humans has to offer. It can also be one of the most terrifying experiences as we learn what it means to be ourselves, to be comfortable with who we are, to be present in time, space, and relationship, and to allow ourselves to be truly seen as we also learn to truly see others.

That fear though, that is our trauma being in control and keeping us in those harmful patterns and cycles. Being brave isn’t easy, and in the end, I do believe it is worth it.

I’ve also been thinking about how Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is connected to our trauma work and processing. As a reminder:

When we consider how this pyramid connects with authoritarian culture, we can see the ways our oppressive culture and the status quo stays in place. Authoritarian culture hones in on our need for a sense of belonging. This is how cults work. This is how many online “spiritual” groups work. This is how our government works. This is how white supremacy works.

In authoritarian culture, when we follow the rules we get to be in the “inner circle”. The cost of being in this circle, and having our need for a sense of belonging met, is that we need to follow the rules, to not question authority, to not listen to our own inner knowing and no and sense of something not being right. When we do this, we are almost always a guaranteed that sense of belonging.

When we break out of that, start to question authority, break the rules, listen to our own inner knowing, we are pushed out of the “inner circle” and we lose our community and therefore our sense of belonging. This can also impact our sense of safeness, as we know that in groups we are stronger and as individuals we are more vulnerable. Which then leaves us in a space of scrambling for that sense of safety and sense of belonging.

This is why people who are physically abused by their intimate partners stay: Their basic needs of food and shelter are being met. Yet they have no sense of real safety, or the abuser provides a sense of false safety and protection. The one who is abused is typically isolated from any other form of community and so their only sense of belonging is with the abuser. Because their sense of safeness and belonging is precarious, it is almost impossible to move into a space of questioning or leaving. First they must find another place of safeness and sense of belonging and this takes time and energy and patience from those outside the abusive relationship who are trying to help the abused.

And.

With every authoritarian culture there are the dissenters and resisters. Those who protest. BUT it is only as these people are able to find each other, and therefore have their need for a sense of safeness and belonging met, that each individual is able to speak out more and more.

Bottom line: We need our people. This is a basic human need. It is only slightly less important than our need for food and shelter and is directly tied to our sense of safeness. Without these needs met, humans can not survive. (Also note that our need for belonging is directly tied to our attachment needs – which are our sense of belonging and being loved).

As a species, we actually do not need to obtain the two higher levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy. We need neither self-esteem nor self-actualization to literally survive.

And authoritarian cultures count on that. As long as one has a sense of belonging, that basic attachment need met, then the one is likely to remain compliant and complicit.

How does this tie into trauma?

I have written before about cultural relational trauma. The culture we live in traumatizes us. Particularly if we don’t fit the “norm” of white, thin, able-bodied, male, upper-middle class (or highter), heterosexual, CIS gendered, etc. Depending on where we fall on the spectrum of meeting or not meeting the “norm” we are more or less traumatized by our culture.

This trauma then lives within us, in our bodies, minds, and spirits.

It is important to note that trauma wants us to isolate. How this typically shows up for us is not that we all go and live in caves and become hermits, but rather that, in order to fit in and have our need for a sense of belonging met, we hide our trauma. We don’t discuss it. We stuff it down. We try to act and be “normal”. We cover up the ways we are different, the ways we have been harmed, and try to pretend there is nothing wrong.

Again, our authoritarian culture counts on this. It can abuse and traumatize us as much as it likes and we won’t speak up because we need our people, even if those people are abusive, even if our connections are not deep, even if it is all surface level. There is safety in numbers. We do not want to be pushed outside that safety.

When we look at chronic trauma – those who have been repeatedly abused sexually, physically, psychologically, or emotionally – we see the hows and whys that they don’t report or tell on the abuser. Doing so would again jeopardize our sense of safeness and belonging.

Look at how we treat victims of rape. Look at how we slut shame. Look at how we victim blame. Look at how we question the experiences of others.

That is authoritarian culture at play. (Note, rape culture is a part of authoritarian culture. It is another tool to be utilized by those in power).

So, how do we move past all this? How do we process trauma and move towards an anti-authoritarian and pro-consent culture? How do we burn down the status quo, knowing that we may be putting our basic human needs in jeopardy by doing so?

We find the dissenters. We find the resisters. We find our true people. We find those communities where it is safe to question the authority of the community itself, not just the greater community and culture outside of it.

This is not easy. It is made somewhat easier by the internet. It also makes us more open for targeting by those who feel their own basic needs being threatened.

And.

As we find more of our true people, the dissenters and resisters and rebels, the ones saying No More and Not On My Watch, we satisfy our need for a sense of belonging (and also our need for a sense of safeness). We find our strength in numbers. We find those who will have our backs and who’s backs we will also protect.

And then, we will rise up together, and burn this all down. Together.

Not one individual can do this work alone, in a bubble. We need our people to do this work. We need our people to fight along side us for justice. We need our people so we can have our basic human need for a sense of belonging to be met. So we can change the world together.

Revolution and rebellion and disruption looks like many things. Sometimes its work out in the world and sometimes its that inner work of unearthing, examining, dismantling and dislodging.

Most Monday afternoons I go to see my therapist. She specializes in two particular modalities of trauma therapy, which is why I chose her. To process and dislodge both some relatively recent traumatic events with my kids, and to process my own various childhood traumas.

For the first year plus, every time I sat down on her couch she asked if I want to do one of the two modalities. I would invariably tell her, No. No I do not. Because this particular form of trauma work, while gentle in many many ways, is also intensely uncomfortable. I literally feel the trauma shifting in my body and it creates a type of dissonance under and on my skin that is… well, uncomfortable.

It isn’t icky feeling or unbearably painful. It is simply not a pleasant sensation. At all.

And so no, No I did not want to do that. Because really, who would intentionally sit there in this intentional physical, emotional and psychological discomfort for 20-40 minutes at a stretch.

Anyhow, I would say my no, we’d laugh, talk about the short game of avoidance and the long game of actually dislodging this shit from my body. We’d do some breath work, I would get present and then I say, okay, let’s do this work.

And we’d do the work and it’s uncomfortable and things would shift and sometimes I *felt* emotions and sometimes I cried and sometimes I’d get an intense pain in a particular part of my body and we;d get curious about it then sometimes I would feel even more emotions and so it goes until I would say it’s time to stop. And we check in with that No More and see if it’s short game saying “I’m uncomfortable and I DON’T WANNA” or if I really have reached my capacity of processing for the day. And so it goes.

In the last six months or so, this has shifted. Now when I walk in I state straight away “I want to do the trauma work” or “I need a lot of time to talk today.” We don’t need to have discussions about avoidance. The work, while uncomfortable, is now something I am more than willing to tolerate because I have seen for myself some of the short and long term benefits of the work.

My point however is that being uncomfortable isn’t fun. Not for me, and really probably not for anyone. By definition, being uncomfortable is NOT enjoyable. And for most of us, in our short game of fear or shoving it down or not wanting to deal or feel, we avoid discomfort like the plague.

Here’s a thing though: we need to remember our Long Game. What our real intentions for being in the world are. What do we have to do to make it happen.

I’m doing my own trauma processing and dislodging for a variety of reasons, many of them about other people (like my kids). But the real, the core reason I’m dealing with my own shit is because I don’t want to ever be frozen in front of a TV screen unable to move as a sexual predator stalks about ever again. I don’t want to ever be frozen in inaction again. I want to be able to move and act and roar and fight.

And, well, I also need to walk my talk. Because I invite all of you to sit in your uncomfortable feelings, to push outside your own comfort zone, to learn that even if we *feel* our our emotions and their physiological sensations or make mistakes or feel uncomfortable because we are challenging our racist uncle at the family feast or defending a boundary with our mother while visiting, we *will* survive. And we may even learn a little bit about selves in the process.

In the all the work I do, facilitating groups and individual work, I invite the participants to push themselves outside their own comfort zones. To become curious as to why they don’t want to “go there.” To expand, contract, then expand a bit more. I always offer tools to help titrate or process or soothe, as needed. And then, when ready enough, we bravely push out into discomfort again, get curious again, ask the whys and start to unravel all the stories that have kept us stuck and small and frozen.

Because I deeply believe that we have remained frozen for far too long. And I deeply believe all of us are carrying trauma in our bodies, be it the trauma of our own lived experience or the trauma passed down to us through our ancestors and in our DNA.

Our trauma impacts us in many ways. It impacts our ability to set boundaries and know our consent. It impact how we relate to other people, and especially as women how we relate to other women.